Purple Hearts (Front Lines 3)

“What is it?” Marie asks, and every eye in the room is on Philippe. He does not answer at first. He is stiff, staring. Then he blinks.

“The wait is over,” Philippe says in an awed tone. “That is the final instruction to begin the uprising.”

Rainy watches Étienne. What exactly is that expression? Philippe is distracted, mentally processing the difficult, dangerous steps ahead. Marie is excited and perhaps worried about Philippe. Wickham is uncomplicatedly joyful and slaps Hooper on the back. But Étienne? His first reaction is unreadable.

Then, almost peevishly, Étienne says, “And what about our tire? We still have to deliver Lieutenant Jones to observe the Das Reich. Those are my instructions.”

Philippe grins. “Perhaps we can get you your tire. But first we must ask you for help. Two of my best men were arrested and deported last week. We are shorthanded, and our assignment is . . . well, complicated.”

“But we cannot—” Étienne begins.

Rainy cuts him off. “What do you need?” she asks Philippe.

“People who can use a gun,” he says bluntly. Then, with a dubious shrug, he adds, “In a perfect world, someone who speaks German fluently. But that is . . .” He performs another Gallic shrug.

Rainy considers. Her objective is to find and shadow and report back on the Das Reich. On the other hand, she cannot do that without Philippe’s help. And her orders do, after all, include language instructing her to render assistance where possible to local elements of the maquis.

“I speak German,” Rainy says.

7

RIO RICHLIN—TROOP SHIP USS RICHARD ATKINSON, THE ENGLISH CHANNEL

Rio Richlin—who does not suffer from seasickness much—is at a final company-level briefing delivered by Captain Tom Passey. It is 3:25 a.m. Most hands hold mugs of steaming coffee.

Captain Passey looks like a store clerk to Rio, a balding, middle-aged man devoid of dash who was, until two months ago, stationed stateside at a supply depot in New Jersey. He is a dedicated officer, willing to learn, but in no way experienced.

Lieutenant Horne, Rio’s platoon leader, sits in a folding chair to one side praying he can keep his food down until the briefing is over. Horne is of middling height, young like virtually all second lieutenants, with a weak chin, brown hair, and brown eyes. He looks like a fellow determined to be important. But at the moment he is trying not to puke.

Three other lieutenants stand in a knot to one side, splitting their attention between Passey and their platoon NCOs, who stand stolidly, looking on with the skepticism that seems to come so naturally to those with stripes on their shoulders.

Three twelve-person rifle squads, plus a smaller headquarters squad, make up a platoon. Four platoons make a company, and Captain Passey is in charge of that company of roughly a hundred and ninety souls.

Each platoon has a lieutenant. Rio surveys the officers as Passey continues. She knows that Lieutenant Arch Manly has some combat experience, having been briefly at Salerno before earning a Purple Heart with a through-and-through bullet wound to his calf. But all told, the remaining lieutenants—Mary Gorski, Don Reynolds, and Daniel Horne, average age maybe twenty-three years—have a total of zero combat experience.

Each of the three rifle platoons has, in addition to a lieutenant, a platoon sergeant, usually a tech or staff sergeant. These are Dain Sticklin, Drake Harwich, and Francis “Frank” Lincoln.

Stick and Lincoln have seen combat; Harwich has not.

Below the platoon sergeants are the squad leaders, buck sergeants, sixteen of them in all, of which seven have been in the war, including Rio Richlin and Cat Preeling, two of the three females.

Not at the briefing are the assistant squad leaders (ASLs) who are babysitting their GIs, and are mostly corporals with a smattering of PFCs and buck sergeants. Of these sixteen men and women, just seven—fewer than half—have seen combat.

The lower ranks, the privates, the body of the army, are also not present at the briefing, but less than 20 percent of the GIs in Passey’s company have combat experience. And this, in total, Rio knows, represents one of the more combat-tested companies in this relatively experienced division.

In short, most of the officers, most of the NCOs, and most of the GIs have no real idea what is coming, a fact that Rio cannot quite put out of her mind as she listens to Passey rattle off recognition signals, assembly points, Day One objectives

, and so on.

Day One objectives.

Rio knows that phrase from Italy. It had quickly become a dark and unfunny joke. The Germans did not care about Day One objectives. In fact, they tended to object in the strongest possible terms to Day One objectives.

They stand around a sand table relief of the beach code-named “Omaha” on a sheet of plywood, with water represented by blue paint. The beach is represented by sand glued in place. The tall bluff is glued sand on smoothed-over papier-mâché.

To Rio’s knowledgeable eye it forms a series of conditions perfectly designed to kill her soldiers.

Passey says, “Now, I know I’m repeating a lot of stuff you already know. But this is a big day we have ahead of us. Field Marshal Rommel has been busy fortifying what the Nazi calls the Atlantic Wall.” He pronounces Nazi as Nazzee, rhyming with snazzy.